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The Eli Home Responds to Cynthia Ward

The Eli Home is a critical tool in the fight to protect children from broken homes and abuse. The Galloway family has been closely associated with it for years. As Eli Home head and former Council member Lorri Galloway launches a bid for Anaheim Mayor, it’s prompted her political enemies to make a variety of claims against her and those who run the Eli Home.

OJ Blogger Cynthia Ward has come out with guns ablazing and it’s prompted the Board of Directors of the Eli Home to respond to Ward with the following statement:

“Ms. Ward’s assumption that Kim and Robin Tulleners have personally benefitted from an Eli property transfer is far from the truth. She does not comprehend the depth of commitment to Eli’s mission from its board, staff, and supporters. Without receiving a dime, the Tulleners served as guarantors, so that Eli could refinance its mortgages to lower interest rates. The Board of Directors was in full control of the transaction and stipulated that the charity must retain ownership of the properties.

The Tulleners have not only tied up their personal credit to guarantee Eli’s shelter mortgages; they have donated money, labor and talents to spearhead programs and manage shelter facility repairs and maintenance for the past 25 years. Their exceptional compassion and generosity has contributed to Eli’s successful navigation through tough times.

As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Eli Home in a small home prayer group, we look forward to the next 30 years of service to abused and neglected children and their mothers. We invite Ms. Ward to join us.”

3 comments for “The Eli Home Responds to Cynthia Ward”

I find it interesting that while I have been asking about these transactions for YEARS, dating back at least to Council member Galloway’s re-election campaign in 2008, the Eli Home is only now coming to the surface to explain this rather unusual business practice. I also find it amusing that of all the bullet points Dan and I have exchanged-and they are merely bullet points comparing our preferred candidates, NOT bullets, as in “guns blazing,” the one item that Camp Galloway responds to is minor, and its intent mistaken. So perhaps I can be moreclear than I was in the original rebuttal to Dan’s send up of Galloway’s non-profit leadership as proof she would make a great Mayor.

The aim of my “guns a-blazing” was clearly Lorri Galloway, and what I see as an epic fail of leadership on every level that Dan claims as her selling points. I have no beef with the Tulleners, I do not know them in any capacity, and very likely could not pick them out of a lineup if I had to. The complaint’s intent was to show how Lorri Galloway, non-profit leader, conducts the business which appears to be her primary source of income.
I appreciate LibOC’s allowing me to post a rebuttal, I nearly missed the post, as ironically when this came out I was attending a “good governance” conference.
“Ms. Ward’s assumption that Kim and Robin Tulleners have personally benefitted from an Eli property transfer is far from the truth. She does not comprehend the depth of commitment to Eli’s mission from its board, staff, and supporters. Without receiving a dime, the Tulleners served as guarantors, so that Eli could refinance its mortgages to lower interest rates. The Board of Directors was in full control of the transaction and stipulated that the charity must retain ownership of the properties.”
To begin with, it is OK to call me “Mrs. Ward.” I love being the wife of Richard, and taking his name, along with the title “Mrs.” in no way devalues me as an individual, but I do appreciate the liberal sensitivity to those women who care about such things. If the worst thing I am called today is Mrs. then it has been a quiet day.

The Eli Home appears to be making assumptions about my assumptions…I do not recall even hinting that the Tulleners have personally benefitted from the property transfer. My point was that Lorri Galloway’s leadership created a situation in which the properties used by the Eli Home as shelters have been picked clean of equity over the years, until a fairly unusual set of transactions had to be devised in order to refinance yet again. Corporations buy, sell, lend, borrow, and repay in their own names, and establish their own independent credit ratings. So why is the Eli Home in such a poor state of affairs that in addition to the Tulleners’ efforts to have “donated money, labor and talents to spearhead programs and manage shelter facility repairs and maintenance for the past 25 years” they also have had to “tie(d) up their personal credit to guarantee Eli’s shelter mortgages.”
Why could the Eli Home, back in the height of their financial success, with the most loosy-goosy lending practices in a generation, not guarantee their own mortgages sufficiently to refinance them? And where is all of the equity from the Anaheim Hills house, which was purchased for roughly one fifth of what is now owed?

Now you may say that unless I am one of the donors who parted with some hefty checks over the years, this is none of my business. But the Eli Home has gone begging to the public coffers many times, and it is my business how my taxes are spent. And when Dan C holds up the glowing track record of Galloway the non-profit leader, as an example of what an exemplary Mayor she will be, then I consider that record fair game for comparison against the very ethical leader we already have.

I also find it interesting that of all of the rebuttals I drafted to Dan C’s own hit piece against a Mayor who has done nothing wrong other than having a letter behind his name that isn’t a “D”….the ONLY item refuted is not even my documentation of unusual financial transactions, the only item refuted is the Eli Home’s perceived assumptions of my intent.

Meanwhile, I wonder if Galloway is ever going to answer the rest of the bullet points I offered? I have waited 5 years to hear her answers, and she has not piped up once.